A blog that I use to talk about things that interest me-anime, sci-fi, fantasy, kink, politics, beer...

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Playing Through The "New" World of Darkness...

Okay, here's the caviat-I've had a love/hate relationship with White Wolf Games. I was never a big fan of vampires (Zakuboy breaks out the flamethrowers and gas-guns with the wooden and silver stakes when he hears that there are vampires around), and the Vampire genre was the big one that appeals to so many people, including LARPers. And, the people that played Werewolf tended to think that the crazy Wolverine was their dream model...

Give me Mage. Lemme turn any annoying Vampire to a deck chair and a margurita shooter and enjoy the sunrise.

So, I approached the "New" World of Darkness with a bit of trepedation. One of the things I liked was that White Wolf seperated the rules from the various "core" universes-you only need to buy one book (The World Of Darkness core rules) and whatever other games you wanted. This was good.

So far, I've picked up the "big three"-Vampire: The Requiem, Werewolf:The Forsaken, and Mage:The Awakening. And, I'm reasonably impressed. One of the big things about this version of the game is that the back story is vague...delibrately so. Torpor means that the oldest vampires are not sure what happened exactly way back when, the Werewolves that are the default PCs are not well regarded by most of the spirits (due to the betrayal of Father Wolf in the belief that he wasn't able to continue the defense of the world), and the confused nature of magical power for mages. And, the rules are a lot clearer-having more page count for details helps. Factional fun exists, too...and is much better to handle.

Problems? Piss-poor layouts, and the occasional "it looks cool but it totally unreadable" font. And, the system demands a GM that can kick ass, take names, and leave any munchkin player in the dust-else, he'll get run over.

I might never be a booster for White Wolf Games, but it is a good read when you can get 20+% off at Borders....